institution

Currently, institutions hold 17.9% of the total market capitalization of HYPE, which is the highest proportion among Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

According to CoinDesk, European financial and cryptocurrency industry organizations have written to the EU Council and the European Parliament, urging lawmakers to remove the cap on the scale of tokenized securities platforms or set it at least at €1.5 trillion (approximately $1.74 trillion), arguing that the €100 billion cap proposed by the European Commission will hinder industry development. Signatories include the French Digital Asset Association Adan, Crypto Council for Innovation, the European Ethereum Institute, as well as companies like Nasdaq and Boerse Stuttgart.The EU's distributed ledger pilot regime allows operators to test the trading and settlement of tokenized stocks, bonds, and investment funds while exempting some existing financial rules. After observing "moderate" participation, the European Commission proposed to expand the pilot framework and raise the current €6 billion cap to €100 billion. Adan stated that considering the development of the global market, this increase is still insufficient, and their preferred option is to completely remove the cap or at least set it to €1.5 trillion, which is 15 times the proposed cap.The joint letter pointed out that some existing European projects have reached a scale of €350 billion and plan to grow further, but did not disclose specific projects or calculation methods. The letter also emphasized that the relevant threshold targets the market capitalization of admitted securities rather than trading volume and opposed giving central securities depositories a significantly higher differentiated cap than other blockchain market operators, arguing that this would be detrimental to emerging service providers.The alliance also compared the restrictive measures in Europe with an unnamed mainstream settlement platform in the United States, which can tokenize assets like stocks without a trading volume cap; if the cap is retained, the alliance hopes the Commission can flexibly raise it as the market grows, without presetting a maximum limit.

The Singapore Exchange (SGX) has received authorization from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) under the Regulation 48.1 framework to open its Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual contracts to U.S. institutional investors. KC Lam, Head of Crypto Derivatives at SGX Group, stated that previously U.S. participants were unable to trade these contracts, but they are now permitted direct access to its trading system.Since its launch at the end of November 2025, SGX's crypto perpetual contracts have accumulated a trading volume of $5.8 billion (approximately 400,000 lots), with an average daily trading volume of 1,300 lots ($19 million) as of August. Bitcoin accounts for 66% of open contracts and 83% of average daily trading volume, with a single-day peak trading volume of 11,500 lots (notional value of $145 million). Lam indicated that as the FIS backend integration is fully ready, they will assist U.S. clearing members in onboarding clients in the next month or two.Unlike crypto-native platforms, SGX's perpetual contracts have no expiration date but employ a margin call and collateral top-up mechanism instead of automatic liquidation, separating trading and clearing based on traditional futures market infrastructure. Stablecoins are not accepted as collateral, and the contract benchmark index is jointly developed by SGX and CoinDesk Indices. SGX's next step is to launch Bitcoin and Ethereum futures and options.

The research institution Sage Road Research released an executive summary of "The AI Trade," stating that since the beginning of this year, the Magnificent Seven has underperformed the Russell 3000 index by about 8 percentage points and the MSCI ACWI by nearly 9 percentage points. In July, the CBOE NDX volatility index relative to the VIX reached its highest point since the internet bubble, and after entering a correction, the Nasdaq index saw a 5% rebound over four days. As of the writing of the report, AI company stock prices have dropped 20% from their 52-week highs in June.Companies are struggling to achieve returns on investment amid soaring AI costs, with Uber, Amazon, Meta, and Walmart implementing restrictions on employee AI usage. Model homogenization limits pricing power, and Chinese open-source models have become a cheap alternative to OpenAI and Anthropic. AI capital expenditures have exceeded expectations, with the consensus for 2026 rising from $527 billion at the end of 2025 to about $800 billion by mid-year. Capital expenditures for hyperscale cloud providers in 2027 are expected to account for 3% of U.S. GDP, more than double the peak of 1.2% during the late 1990s telecom fiber construction. Allianz Research calculates that there is nearly a 46% growth gap between AI investment and sales, worse than the 32% during the 2001 telecom bubble.As of June, hyperscale cloud providers and related entities like Nvidia issued $225 billion in bonds, a year-on-year increase of 973.7%. The off-balance-sheet liabilities of tech giants have increased eightfold over four years to $1.65 trillion.

According to PR Newswire, Cosmos announced the launch of the Cosmos Partner Network, uniting multiple industry service providers to assist global financial institutions in advancing digital asset-related businesses through the Cosmos Tokenization Suite and digital ledger solutions.The suite offers capabilities such as 24/7 payment settlement and fund management for banks and credit unions, and supports scenarios like programmable custody, programmable trade finance, and agency commerce. Cosmos provides tokenization and ledger platforms, while partners offer integrated services such as KYC/KYB, custody, and compliance monitoring.Cosmos Co-CEO Maghnus Mareneck stated that financial institutions understand the potential of tokenization but struggle to transition from pilot projects to high-quality real customer experiences. This network brings together relevant professional institutions to reduce the complexity of individually connecting with vendors.The first batch of the network includes 17 participants, including Anseta, Balance, BCW Group, BitGo, Blockchain.com, Blockdaemon, Coinbax, DFNS, Galaxy Digital, Hypernative, InfStones, OpenZeppelin, Peersyst Technology, Silence Laboratories, Ubyx, Utila, and Zeeve.Partners will have access to connection opportunities across Cosmos public and private networks and can participate in use cases such as tokenized deposits that Cosmos is promoting. Cosmos plans to continue expanding the network.

Bitget released its transparency report for August 2026, disclosing its latest progress in the construction of a multi-asset trading ecosystem. In terms of U.S. stock tokens, taking rNVDA as an example, its daily trading volume reached $38.5 million, with over 4,200 users completing approximately 112,800 transactions, of which about 36% of the trading volume occurred outside regular U.S. trading hours, reflecting that rToken is becoming a core tool for investors to break through traditional trading time constraints and achieve 24/7 global asset allocation.On the institutional business front, Bitget launched an institutional-level CFD liquidity solution aimed at quantitative teams, proprietary trading firms, funds, brokers, and high-net-worth professional traders, supporting high-frequency quantitative trading, arbitrage between futures and spot, and automated trading scenarios such as EA.At the same time, the platform launched FCN (Fixed Coupon Notes), bringing traditional financial structured products into the tokenized U.S. stock market, becoming the first cryptocurrency exchange to combine the FCN structure with USDT settlement and U.S. stock rToken delivery. As related products and trading infrastructure continue to improve, Bitget is further strengthening its capabilities in institutional-level services, multi-asset coverage, and liquidity.In addition, third-party data shows that Bitget performs outstandingly in terms of liquidity and execution efficiency for tokenized stocks and stock perpetual contracts. In a liquidity benchmark test targeting the five stock spot markets of MSTR, SPY, QQQ, CRCL, and NVDA, DeFiLlama recorded Bitget with the lowest median bid-ask spread of 0.83 basis points and the deepest order book liquidity among all sample markets. In execution benchmark tests covering 36 stock perpetual contracts and 8 types of metal and commodity perpetual contracts, Bitget maintained a significant lead in approximately 90% of trading pairs.

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini announced that its subsidiary Gemini Digital Payments Singapore, Pte. Ltd. (GDPSPL) has obtained a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), allowing it to provide digital payment token and cross-border remittance services.

The Compound Foundation announced the launch of the Institutional Market, a lending market exclusively for whitelisted institutions, supporting borrowing of ETH, wstETH, WBTC, and cbBTC with USDC, with a maximum loan-to-value ratio of 87%. On its first day of launch, the market was oversubscribed, with participation from institutions such as DeFi Saver, K3/Nexo, KPK, and Yearn. The entry threshold is a deposit of 100,000 USDC, and Compound has reserved 200,000 USDC as supplier incentives, which will be proportionally distributed to whitelisted participants within three months, with a supply cap of 20 million USD.This market is the first product to be launched from the 52 million USD plan approved by the Compound DAO in August, described by the foundation as the Institutional Comet built on v3.5, independent of the DAO-funded V4 roadmap. Compound stated that v3 has been running for four years without any incidents. Currently, Compound's total locked value is 1.53 billion USD, with 1.42 billion USD on the Ethereum chain, ranking sixth among lending protocols on DefiLlama, with a 23% growth over the past 30 days.The Compound Foundation was relaunched on August 17 with a budget of 52 million USD, with a team from Coinbase, Anchorage, NEAR, and Maple.

UBS announced that it has launched the Swiss Franc stablecoin Sandbox testing phase in collaboration with 8 other institutions: PostFinance, Sygnum, Raiffeisen, Zurich Cantonal Bank, BCV, SIX, TWINT, and Swiss Stablecoin AG, to explore the integration of blockchain applications with the Swiss Franc stablecoin.This test is based on the Swiss Franc stablecoin CHFD, which has been technically launched in the Sandbox environment since the end of June and is pegged to the Swiss Franc at a 1:1 ratio. The testing will focus on exploring application scenarios such as automated inter-institutional transactions, digital asset tokenization settlement, and programmable payments, including reducing online market fraud risks, improving fair access to event tickets, and increasing the efficiency of public fund distribution. The test is expected to continue until the end of 2026. UBS stated that the Sandbox aims to accumulate technical, operational, and regulatory experience and does not represent a decision to officially launch the Swiss Franc stablecoin.

Australia's financial intelligence agency AUSTRAC has canceled, suspended, or refused to renew the registrations of 45 cryptocurrency and remittance service providers in the past year to strengthen the scrutiny of high-risk payment businesses. The involved institutions faced issues such as inactivity, insolvency, or lack of operational capability, as well as failure to report significant changes, incorrect registration information, and significant money laundering or terrorism financing risks. AUSTRAC CEO Brendan Thomas stated that businesses whose registrations have been canceled are not allowed to continue operations, and some related individuals have been referred to domestic and international law enforcement or regulatory agencies. AUSTRAC specifically mentioned BA Digital Ventures operating under the name GetCoins, whose virtual asset registration was canceled in June due to customer complaints, allegedly because the platform was exploited by organized cryptocurrency investment scams, with related actions conducted in cooperation with the national anti-fraud center. The public VASP registration list also included recent disposals of institutions such as Cryptolink, Self Custody, Jam Xchange, and Coinsec Australia. Additionally, AUSTRAC has launched an investigation into Western Union and suspended the cryptocurrency ATM network of Cryptolink.

According to a report by the Korean News Agency, Matthew Dawson, co-founder of Ethereum Institutional, visited South Korea for the first time and held meetings with local major banks, securities companies, asset management firms, and exchanges to establish cooperative relationships. Dawson stated that South Korea has strong financial institutions and a developer community capable of fully utilizing blockchain infrastructure, and pointed out that the recent policy direction on token securities released by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) provides a good opportunity for cooperation.He anticipates that South Korean institutions, which currently start with private chains, will eventually upgrade to public blockchains, and emphasized that Ethereum, with its security, liquidity, and neutrality, is the ideal infrastructure for carrying core institutional assets. In terms of organizational expansion, Ethereum Institutional plans to introduce a head of Asia within 6 to 7 weeks and recruit technical, business, and consulting talent in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, the suspected largest HYPE holding institution of a16z continued to buy HYPE today. This institution previously spent 66.4 million USDC to purchase 816,000 HYPE at an average price of 81.3 dollars a week ago; 8 hours ago, it transferred 13.05 million USDC to Hyperliquid and purchased HYPE through a TWAP method.Currently, this institution has bought and staked 5.201 million HYPE, worth approximately 445 million dollars, with an average purchase price of about 67.2 dollars, and the current floating profit is approximately 95.18 million dollars.

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit announced the appointment of Sean Ballard as the Head of Derivatives and Institutional Business. Ballard will play a key role in strengthening trading infrastructure, risk frameworks, and institutional capabilities, with responsibilities covering trading risk and exchange technology.Ballard has over 25 years of experience in global financial markets, encompassing derivatives, high-frequency trading, trading risk, market structure, and exchange technology. Before joining Bybit, he worked at Jump Trading, where he led the company's high-frequency futures trading operations in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, managing portfolios and collaborating with global exchanges and regulators on market structure, trading performance, and infrastructure. During his time at Jump Trading, he also served as a senior trader on the Jump Crypto team, managing centralized exchange trading and driving strategic partnerships related to ecosystem growth.At Bybit, Ballard will enhance the institutional trading experience through market infrastructure, risk management, and product development. Bybit Institutional has introduced professional services such as bank tripartite arrangements over the past year, allowing institutions to manage counterparty risk through regulated custody while retaining full trading authority; the market maker gateway has reduced latency for high-frequency and quantitative clients from 4 milliseconds to 1.5 milliseconds. Starting July 2026, Finloop's AAA-rated USD money market fund FUIDL will be available as trading collateral on Bybit.

According to Zhitong Finance, Standard Chartered Bank stated that it will expand its institutional-level Bitcoin and Ethereum spot trading business from the UK to the UAE and will launch this business.

The US spot XRP ETF has recorded net inflows for 11 consecutive trading days, attracting approximately $170 million in funds during this period. Since its launch in November last year, the cumulative net inflow of these funds has reached about $1.68 billion. As of Wednesday morning, the trading price of XRP was around $1.33, down from about $1.45 on August 27, but still higher than the $1 level in mid-August.According to the disclosures in the 13F filings, Goldman Sachs is the largest institutional holder of the XRP ETF, holding approximately $87.4 million, while Jane Street and Millennium Management hold $16.6 million and $16.2 million, respectively. Investment advisors are the largest category of holders, accounting for about $120 million of the disclosed $183 million, while hedge funds hold about $25 million, and brokers and banks hold approximately $17 million and $14 million, respectively.However, institutional holdings and fund inflows measure different dimensions: the 13F filings reflect the holdings as of June 30, while the continuous inflows record new funds from the end of August to early September. These data only reflect the total holdings of the ETF and not the complete exposure of investors to XRP; institutions like Goldman Sachs may hedge part of the price risk through futures or other instruments. The next round of 13F filings will be released in November.

According to CoinDesk, 21 international financial institutions have announced plans to establish a new company in the second half of 2026 to promote the issuance of stablecoins, with the specific name to be announced later. The company will initially focus on USD-denominated stablecoins and plans to expand to more G7 currencies in the future, with a priority on euro stablecoins.Participating institutions include Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Wells Fargo, BBVA, Santander Bank, MUFG Bank, and others. The stablecoin initiative aims to serve wholesale, institutional, and retail markets, applying to scenarios such as cross-border payments and digital asset settlements.The group stated that the stablecoin solution will combine bank-level compliance, governance, and institutional risk management capabilities, and plans to comply with relevant regulatory requirements such as the U.S. GENIUS Act and the EU MiCA. The project aims to officially launch stablecoin products in the first half of 2027.

The research institution Sigmaintell has released a storage price indicator showing that in the third quarter of 2026, the overall supply and demand in the global storage market remains tight. Prices for all categories of DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) and NAND Flash (flash memory) continue to rise month-on-month, but the rate of increase has significantly slowed compared to the second quarter, with the month-on-month increase for some storage chips narrowing to within 10%.

Tom Lee stated during his appearance on CNBC: "I believe that there are actually very few people who truly hold cryptocurrencies. Because of this, I think Bitcoin can easily break through six figures (like over $100,000), but it may also be affected by interest rate hikes. As for how cryptocurrencies will perform, I think this will be a good test, but we have already seen long-term yields (interest rates) rising. So, if we see the Federal Reserve raising interest rates while long-term yields actually decline, that would essentially mean monetary easing. Therefore, the key may be how long-term yields respond to the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes."He also added: "I think this is just the first wave of the rise because this round of cryptocurrency market has caught many people off guard. Well, I believe institutional investors are buying stocks related to cryptocurrencies, and this is very obvious—trading volume has surged significantly, which signals that they are betting on a big market in the fourth quarter. I think $150,000 is still possible, well, it's actually not that far from now."